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I recently accepted a position from Teach and Learn with Georgia, a Georgian Ministry of Education program designed to bring native speakers of English into classrooms around the country. I will be moving to Georgia in August of 2014 to begin my assignment.

Before this latest adventure, I studied at Bogazici University in Istanbul Turkey and at Azerbaijan University of Languages. I speak English German Spanish, Turkish Azerbaijani and Uzbek and am currently trying my hand at Georgian.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

I’m going to get McDonalds! Now, I will tell you, when I
live in the States, I abhor this particular symbol of American culture and
avoid it like the plague. But something happens to you when you live in
isolation from your home country for long periods of time. You start to miss
the strangest things. I never watch sports on TV. I went to a Big 10 school and
watched perhaps 5 sports games in their entirety in 4 years and that was for
the company. Here, when basketball or American football pops up on the TV
screen I am riveted to it like it’s the end of the world is arriving. The
announcers even speak English. Country music becomes far less grating on the
ear. I can still only take a few minutes at a time, but this is an infinite
increase of listening for me. And MSG and chemicals in my food sound delicious.
I can list for you the preserved food items available in Mestia: chocolate,
chips, pickles, canned peas and olives, Russian ramen (just don’t), biscuits,
pop, mayonnaise, kielbasa, and a few frozen items like khinkali which a new
government study shows often contain salmonella and/or listeria. Yummy. Add to
this a diet pretty lacking in variety (potatoes, bread and beans are the
staples—I thought I was in heaven when we had cabbage one time) and you start
having food cravings that would put a pregnant woman to shame. Now the nearest
schwarma stand is 3 hours from me. The nearest fast food restaurant is 6, and
requires an overnight stop because of the scarcity of transport. Mestia’s idea
of fast food is hot bread. Which is delicious but when you already eat
approximately a loaf of bread a day, it’s less appetizing. You start to
understand why McDonalds is an event. Up here you can either embrace the
isolation, enjoy your ability to live like a hermit, and immerse yourself fully
in the community, or go completely bat-crazy. I’ve taken the former route but
it’s time to descend to the lowlands after 10 weeks on my mountain. My body
wants a milkshake.

PS. The McDonalds was ridiculously overpriced and utterly
delicious. No regrets. It was also hilarious to watch the city dwelling
Georgians watch the obvious foreigner who also acted like a total
deer-in-the-headlights villager.

Tskaltubo Sanatorium

And I totally was deer in the headlights. I wandered through
the bazaar in Zugdidi like I’d arrived on mars and probably drove the entire
place insane with my slow pace and getting lost down dead ends every three
seconds. It was a short shop while I waited for my next marshrutka to take me
to Kutaisi. On the way from Mestia I was one of two passengers on the marsh and
the driver bought us khachapuri when we stopped and we had a chat about who the
hell I was. He and the other woman were duly impressed that I live in Mestia
and speak some Georgian and Svan. Down in Zugs with my backpack everyone
assumed I was a tourist and kept saying “Mestia, Mestia” ie—I have a taxi and
will drive you to Mestia for a ridiculous sum of money. So I did the only thing
you can—I answered them. მესტიაში ვცხოვრობ--I live inMestia. Then they were
interested. “Kartulad laparakobt? (You speak Georgian) Ra tkma unda (Of course)
Martla Mestiashi vtsxovrob (do you really live in Mestia) ki, inglisuri
mastsavlebeli var (Yes, I’m an English teacher). Didi xania ik vtsxovrob? (Have
you lived there long?) Erti tseli (one year) [looks and sounds of surprise, as
I’ve mentioned before Svaneti is to Georgia a mix of the Wild West in terms of
law and order plus the physical hardships of living, in say, rural Alaska]
Kargi gogo xar (you’re a good girl).” This conversation and variations thereof
was repeated probably half a dozen times in the course of 10 minutes.
Essentially every time I got outside of the circle of participants and people
who listened in on the last one.

The former concert hall and Gocha, our lovely guide.

I had, as ever, the most insane driver ever from Zugdidi to
Kutaisi. I inevitably end up with the utter maniac behind the wheel. This
particular driver was a young man in sunglasses who pushed the minibus well
beyond its limits so that everything in the things was shaking. But we made it
to Kutaisi in an hour and a half rather than the usual two hours. Once it
Kutaisi I was overwhelmed by the size, the traffic and the heat. It was
probably 60 or 65 but I was dying, and had to change from my pants into shorts,
and strip down to a single long sleeved tee, which I was ready to strip off as
well and walk around in just a cami, but felt way too shy what with already
airing my hairy legs. I met up with some other teachers in a tea house in
central Kutaisi after successfully negotiating the buses. I sat in sumptuous pleasure
and talked. And talked. And talked. It was so good to speak English with
another native speaker and not only that, but to speak with someone who is
experiencing things so similar to what you are. We had a small birzha in the
road while waiting for other teachers to arrive and confirmed our villager
status but squatting in the middle of the alley and having to move when people
in cars younger than we are turned the corner to find the strangest collection
of foreigners they’ve ever come across. They probably will to talking about us
for years to come. I spent both nights sober due to my rabies shots and felt a
bit like the grandma of the group, looking after everyone, but I still had some
great chats with folks, getting deep, as people who are thrown together as we
have been often do.

Yes, that is an ox-pulled sledge carrying wood for the stove down my dirt road. For anyone who ever questions my developing world credentials

We spent all of Saturday sight-seeing in Kutaisi, but my
favorite was a stop in Tskaltubo, which saw its heyday as a resort with 20 or
so sanatoria in the Soviety era. Now the town has 20 or so abandoned sanatoria
along with an impressive collection of other abandoned buildings. Don’t get me
wrong, it’s still way more of a town than Mestia is (it even had a schwarma
stand, worked by a Svan from Mulakhi, who shook my hand in surprise and respect
when I greeted him in Svan) but there’s a lot of abandoned stuff there. The
highlight was breaking off from the massive group with 4 other teachers, all of
whom I get along with exceptionally well and approaching one such abandoned
building. It had a trio of guards outside so we were a little worried they’d be
pissed we just wandered up. Matt and Liz started up a a conversation while I
worked on my schwarma and eventually the rest of us approached. We chatted away
and the head guard, a round man slightly shorter than I, of middle age told us
“well, nobody is supposed to go in, but I’ll give you a private tour if you
like”. We did. Once he had heard me speak Georgian he apparently decided I was
the group’s translator and so every room we entered he would tell me a bit and
then turn and say “Utxari (say to them)”. While I couldn’t translate
everything, I did pretty well if I may say so myself. We wandered the empty,
decaying building, which must have been beautiful in its day with awe. We
looked at the visitor’s book, with entries in Russian, Georgian, Italian,
English, German, Arabic and Chinese (at a guess) all from the 70s. We saw a
Happy October Revolution card and leafed through the books in the doctors
offices. We wandered through the restaurant, and the concert hall, saw Stalin’s
Pavilion out the blown out windows, as well as the outdoor dance terrace, and
the long balcony running along the front. He kept urging us to stay longer, but
our rented marsh was leaving. We thanked him many times and he urged us to
visit again, to come see him, to have a meal with him, wished us the very best
in our teaching, happy Georgian spouses, many Georgian babies and introduced us
to all of his pals. This country might have had some very rough patches in the
not so distant past and there might be some coming in the future, but its spirit
seems to be utterly unbreakable.

I graduated from Michigan State University in 2014 with degrees in chemistry, anthropology and Turkic languages. When not out globetrotting, I can be found perched in front of my laptop, sharing my adventures with you.